The word "sketch" existed as early as the Jin Dynasty, belonging to the Buddhist term of ancient India. Shi Shuo Xin Yu Literature: Under the sentence of "Yin Reading Essays", Liu Xiao marked: "Shi Shuo Jian Kong Jing is detailed. The details are big products, and the short ones are sketches. " Kumarajiva translated the Maha Prajna Paramita Sutra, calling the 27 volumes with more details as "Great Prajna" and the 10 volume with less details as "Little Prajna". It can be seen that "essays" and "masterpieces" refer to abridged versions of Buddhist scriptures. Because of its short length, concise language and easy reading and dissemination, it is favored by people. Zhang Rong's "Legacy Order": "My life is good, and Lingyun smiles. The coffin is 3 thousand dollars, and there is no new one. The left hand holds Xiao Jing and Lao Zi, and the right hand holds the essay Hokkekyo. " (Book of Southern Qi (Volume 41)) shows his preference for "essays". At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Xiang was written, and the preface said: "Long summer, living in Pishan, celebrating the" Lotus Sketch ",the most famous temple, is a short story." At the end of the Ming Dynasty, people were obsessed with Buddhism in order to escape political disasters, but they just escaped from Zen and hid in Zen. Most people didn't really escape into an empty door. Therefore, they have no patience to study the profound and mysterious Buddhist scriptures, but they have a special liking for "essays". With the prosperity of Zen Buddhism and Yue Xue, scholars naturally transplanted the concept of "essays" into literature. In the thirty-ninth year of Wanli (16 1 1), Wang Jian-yi compiled Su Changgong's Collected Works, which was originally regarded as a literary concept. Chen Jiru's Essays on Su Changgong said: "If you want to choose a collection of essays on long-term workers, you should choose short works before differences, with tens of thousands of words on theory, strategy and printing, so that students can learn later. For those who read Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, it is not too late to read "A Han Xiao" first, and then it was written into 548 volumes. This method of reading long public collections is also. " (Mr. Mei Gong's Essays on the Evening Fragrant Hall, Volume XI) puts forward "short but different" as the feature of "essays" and compares it with "Essays on A Han", which shows that the concept of "essays" was moved from Buddhist scriptures. This is the original concept of "essays" in the late Ming Dynasty, which generally refers to prose style, with short length, meaningful and novel. Chen Jiru was the leader of the "Mountain Man" family in the late Ming Dynasty. Under his call, the word "sketch" spread like wildfire, and at that time everyone rushed to write, select and discuss sketches, which became the general trend.

China's comedy sketches originated in the early 1980s, inheriting and developing the advantages of drama, duet and sketch. Especially, Zhu Shimao, Yan Shunkai, Zhao, Song Dandan, Pan Changjiang, Zhao Benshan, Little Shenyang and so on.